Bloomberg is the eighthmajor organization chief officer to speak at MIT Commencement in 10 years, and he is the Institute’s 114th Commencement speaker dating back to 1880, the earliest year that MIT Commencement records exist at MIT’s Institute Archives and Special Collections.

A prominent philanthropists and fearless voice on gun violence, climate change, public health, and other issues, Bloomberg is part of a group of non-MIT alumni Commencement speakers that includes last year's guest speaker, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg; Apple CEO Tim Cook; President Bill Clinton; Vice President Al Gore; and Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick. View the full list of guest speakers at MIT Commencement through the years.

The most frequent MIT Commencement speaker? Francis A. Walker, MIT’s third president, who was the primary speaker 11 times between 1883-1896.

Perhaps the most notable event in MIT’s Commencement history occurred when there was no speaker. In 1970, during the peak of the United States’ conflict in Vietnam, the graduating class requested that then-MIT President Howard Wesley Johnson HM ’66 refrain from speaking in lieu of two minutes of silence to consider what can be done “to help resolve the conflicts which divide mankind in this country and around the world.”

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